Breaking the Stagnation, Unique events.

[117Killer]

Stellaris has long had the issue where the game will hit the mid-game, and slow down to a crawl. with no more empty space left to expand peacefully into, and most empire (excluding the player's of course) are relatively even in fighting power, the galaxy quickly stagnates. Besides any shake ups by the player the Galaxy will typically barely change from this point onward, with the AI being reluctant top declare any wars against equal powers. In theory the Khan is the shake-up made to destabilize this situation..... except it doesn't really work. The Khan blitzes in, takes a little territory, the AI fails horribly to fight it, the Khan dies, his territory becomes one or several states, and then we go back to our regularly scheduled programming.

See, to break a stagnant situation, you NEED a power imbalance. The player is one, because the player is on average far better in every aspect than the AI, so can reliably beat even an AI of equal strength, the rare times such an AI appears in a game. But the player tends to only destabilize the local area around them, and almost always in their favor. That means that, the way stellaris works, once you emerge from the Early game race more powerful than your competitors, you will stay there for the rest of the game. The AI has no capacity (like in EU4) to coalition up to take you on, and the AI's most distant from you, with the best opportunity to grow without you crushing them, will still end up equal to their neighbors, and thus, stagnating.

I think there could be a fun way to create the power imbalance we're looking for without vast changes to the game. Unique Events. A Unique event would be generated at the start of the game, much like the game decides on the outcome of L-gates. This event should be a powerful technology of some kind. it decides from a small list of these things and will give out only ONE per playthrough. they should also probably be divided into early/mid/late game categories as of course different advantages are relevant in different time periods.

The idea came from reading about the battletech universe and watching a video about the first battlemech. The idea is to add a real GAMECHANGER into the arena, maybe to a random empire, maybe based on an empire's power or score. Then that empire would get a LOT more powerful for a while, then inevitably it's enemy's would get the technology, or it gets stolen by their rivals (steal technology should auto-grab the unique tech when they have one) and it would proliferate around the galaxy, slowly stabilizing the situation.

But it should be the kind of thing that truly shakes up the situation. A new weapon or even ships type, or a powerful ground unit or industrial tech. Whatever it is should be enough to radically shift the balance of power for a few decades before the technology's proliferated amongst enough of the galaxy for no one to hold an inherent advantage and the situations goes back to stability.

 

[Ezumiyr]

That's basically the "breakthrough" that several mods introduced.
It doesn't alter the midgame stagnation effectively.
I would even say that nothing purely passive would ever affect midgame stagnation, and anyway it's not like all empires on the map share similar techs in the midgame. Some are always more advanced than others, but it doesn't change anything.

The only solution is to actually get something to do in the midgame. Can be several things, like more fragmented empires (with more independant factions/sectors), or deeper planet management (with manageable ecospheres or social groups for example)...

 

[117Killer]

That's basically the "breakthrough" that several mods introduced.
It doesn't alter the midgame stagnation effectively.
I would even say that nothing purely passive would ever affect midgame stagnation, and anyway it's not like all empires on the map share similar techs in the midgame. Some are always more advanced than others, but it doesn't change anything.

The only solution is to actually get something to do in the midgame. Can be several things, like more fragmented empires (with more independant factions/sectors), or deeper planet management (with manageable ecospheres or social groups for example)...

I'm not just suggesting a tech significantly more powerful, but one that is also significantly SHIFTS the focus. The inspiration in battletech is the mech's themselves, whcih enter the galaxy in a time where warships have been relegated to a support role, and so almost all combat takes place planetside, and almost always ends up in a slow grinding conflicts where military's feed millions into the slaughter. The introduction of the mech introduced a highly maneuverable armored vehicle capable of mounting heavy weapons, that meant conflicts changed from a focus on large scale infantry forces backed with Armour, to army's focused around much smaller groups of highly trained mechwarriors fighting against each other, with all other forces focused around the mechwarrior's as their primary fighting force.

How would that look in stellaris. i don't entirely know. what if it was a tech that gave you the ability to propose a treaty to other empires or a law to limit the number of ships allowed in wars. That also increased the Warscore of ground battles. maybe that would change the focus during those years to fighting ground battles. perhaps one that limits you to certain ships types while also giving you a more powerful version of that ship.

Maybe tech that dosen't increase the direct fighting strength of your fleets, but massively increases they're speed, letting even a small fleet blitzkrieg a larger enemy. Or shields and armour that aren't affected by the increased damage of plasma's or kinetics.

I'm not entirely sure how best it could be done. i just think it should be a one time thing each game, shouldn't always be the same thing, and shouldn't be acquirable any other way. As long as it then adds enough power or game change to destabilize things to a significant degree. Remember the hope was that it wasen't too complex an addition that it could be done easily, while a rework of rebellions will take a great deal more work than adding a small number of techs, one of which is added per game.

 

[Ryika]

Problem is, when one AI becomes more powerful, the others tend to just ally with each other due to the now higher threat level, and then they end up in a stalemate again.
I think to really solve the stalemates, AIs must just be a lot more willing to declare ware against foes of equal strength, and a lot better at conquest so wars actually do shift the power balance permanently.

Such events may still be interesting though, since they could very well act as a random variable that forces you to rethink your plans. But I don't think they'd be a good cure for the AI stalemates.

 

[Me_]

So, another Khan. How many Khans do we need for the game to not get stale? A Khan every 50 years? I'd rather have more internal mechanics than more Khans.

 

[Casko]

we'd simply need first and foremost more internal politics, (rework of the factions when?)


Myself I usually always make sure that the galaxy spawns with atleast 1 Fanatic Purifier, which tends to if nothing else, be extremely hostile for longer than regular AI.

 

[sillyrobot]

There's a couple of attempts at this: a somewhat rare anomaly that is a shielded system that if you tinker with it can fail and let loose the FP fast-growing empire, the Khan, and the FE awakening.

They all fail. Especially on a player's second playthrough when approximate power levels are known. The trouble is military threat in inherently local and simply a supercharged version of the already present risk. Either the player is directly in the sphere of threat or doesn't care. Once the approximate power levels are known, players typically build enough military might to mitigate the risks when they can.

 

[Cry_Havok]

The only thing that could make the game less stagnant is empires being less stable. It should be progressively harder to keep more sectors in line, and slavery and purging need to in particular be very hard to manage in large numbers. In order for this to work though things like ethics and factions need to matter, and slaves and purging need to actually have consequences

Edit reason: really bad typo

 

[Aegrim]

The onmly thing that could make the game less stagnant is empires being less stable. It should be progressively harder to keep more sectors in line, and slavery and purging need to in particular be very hard to manage in large numbers. In order for this to work though things like ethics and factions need to matter, and slaves and purging need to actually have consequences

This. I wish empires would fall apart, an ever changing and evolving galaxy so you can just keep playing the same save forever would be great.

 

[The Bored Chairman]

Personally, I think the solution to midgame stagnation is to expand the GC.

Empires will ALWAYS join, even if their Ethics/empire designation (Harmonious Collective) would otherwise be averse to it. They also never leave, even if they suffer horrific drawbacks from Sanctions. There are no Rogue States, unless they were already a galactic threat (Exterminators, Purifiers, etc.)

There's nothing that resembles interaction like with the Batarians in Mass Effect. Resolutions to chastise/prosecute Rogue states are pointless.